- My girlfriend wishes the way we met was more romantic, but our first date makes a great story.
- She was supposed to contact her friends during our date, but we hit it off and she forgot.
My girlfriend, Eliza, wishes we had a good rom-com-style meet-cute story. There were a lot of chances for us to meet earlier on. Toronto feels incredibly small. We had mutual friends, worked in adjacent industries, and spent time writing at the same café.
She'd love it if we could tell people that we had a moment where we both looked up over our laptops, locked eyes, and just knew we were meant to be. Instead, when someone asks how we met, we shrug and reply: "Oh, just on Hinge." After that, the conversation shuts down.
But even if we don't have a meet-cute origin, we still have a good story to tell people — how our pretty amazing first date was a nightmare for Eliza's roommates.
When she turned to online dating, she developed a safety system
Eliza is brilliant, funny, and kind. She had never had a problem meeting great people and had never felt the need to use apps before. But after breaking up with someone who wasn't the best, she followed her friends' advice and decided to try Hinge.
Online dating comes with a bit of a learning curve, so Eliza relied on her roommates to create a system just in case the date went poorly. The rules were as follows: She would take a full-body picture — without smiling — of what she was wearing to the date, drop a pin when she got there, and drop more pins if she went to any other locations. Then, she would text sporadically to let them know how it was going. Finally, the minute the date was over, she would text them with a map of the route she was taking to get home with an estimated arrival time.
All the rules faded away when we met
Unfortunately for them, when Eliza and I met, we clicked instantly. There was no awkwardness, we felt completely at ease, and the conversation flowed. We had so much in common and our senses of humor aligned, so both of our phones stayed in purses and jacket pockets — for five hours.
We even closed down the bar we had chosen on a Tuesday night.
By 1 a.m., we were the only customers left and noticed the servers were a bit intense. They stared at us the whole time, and we could tell they were talking about us. They approached us, and, ignoring me, asked Eliza a few times whether she was "having a good time." When we got up to pay, one of them looked straight at Eliza and asked whether it had been a good date.
Even with the intensity of their looks, we shrugged it off; we both thought they were just annoyed we had kept them open late. We left a good tip and hoped they'd forgive us if we ever returned. Then, Eliza looked at her phone and everything made sense.
Her friends had asked the staff to check in on her
When her friends hadn't heard from her, they went on high alert. See, Eliza is a responsible, dependable person. In their minds, if she didn't follow the protocol, it must mean the worst had happened — there was no other explanation than that Eliza was kidnapped. Using every lesson they learned from watching reruns of "Law and Order: SVU" and Liam Neeson movies — as well, of course, as their experiences always being on guard as women living in major cities — they set a plan in motion.
First, they called the bar, but it went straight to voicemail. Undeterred, her trusty roomies did some detective work and tracked down a friend who knew someone who happened to know a bartender working at the bar that night. They explained the situation to the person and asked whether they could see a woman with a pixie cut on a date with a guy wearing glasses. If so, they wanted the staff to check to see whether she looked in distress.
After the staff confirmed we were there, they asked for photo confirmation, and it turned into a conversation about our body language; we were so engaged with each other that we didn't notice when the staff took a few photos to send to her roommates to analyze. Were Eliza's smiles and laughs genuine? "Can you get a closer pic, we need to see if the smile goes to her eyes?" one of the texts from them read.
We've been together 5 years now
It was reassuring to know that a panel of judges we didn't know existed thought our vibes were genuine. Not many first dates get reviewed, but we can confidently say that the judges found that the date was going well.
"They're laughing a lot and it seems like they're into each other," the bartender said via text.
It's been five years now that Eliza and I have been together, and we have lived together for over three of those years. When it comes to first dates, I know we all want it to feel like a movie. Eliza and I definitely had a Tom Hanks-meets-Meg Ryan-type date. Unfortunately for her roommates, they experienced our date more like something from the "Taken" franchise.